UPDATE: This post was updated with the “History Repeats Itself” section on 6:00 PM PDT
9to5Mac claims that Apple will be unveiling a new manufacturing plant to produce their upcoming line of portables. Regarding this news, I recently participated in the following exchange on Twitter:
Gruber: If true [Apple creating their own manufacturing plant], this is something: http://9to5mac.com/macbook-…
MacJournals: @gruber Big “if.” Jobs may have loved his own factories, but Tim Cook got Apple out of the mfg business first thing; it’s too inflexible.
Me: @macjournals Then again T.Cook isn’t the CEO. Anything that can be described as a love of SJ can’t ever, truly, be off the table.
MacJournals:@thewolf That argument presumes Apple is a vanity exercise that puts Jobs’s ego ahead of business. We’ve seen no modern evidence of this.
Unfortunately a proper response won’t fit in Twitter’s 140 character limit because the issue is deeper than just whether or not Apple could be going into the manufacturing: It exposes your worldview on Apple and Steve Jobs’ influence.
It is hard to argue that NeXT was nothing more than a vanity project of Steve Jobs. NeXT and Steve Jobs spent over 100,000 dollars on creating the logo and brand. NeXT was a company that became heavily leveraged in the hardware and manufacturing process. Those endeavors eventually failed and NeXT had to spin off its hardware. NeXT created technology that continues to shape the computing world, but lacked commercial success.
In contrast Apple, with Steve Jobs back at the helm, has entered a sort of renaissance period. Its stock in 1996 traded between six and seven dollars a share. Unlike NeXT, Apple, over the past 12 years, has been both an industry innovator and a commercial success. This dual success begs the question did something about Jobs change that allowed him to have commercial success where previously he had been met with failure? Or is it simply that Jobs vision is now more financially viable–that somehow the market has come around to Jobs and Apple and not the other way around?
It probably isn’t a simple dichotomy, but instead a mix of both. There is no doubt in my mind that Jobs has, at times, an unyielding vision, and no amount of market research or PowerPoints from the McKinsey consultants they keep locked up in a back room will persuade him to deviate. I think a lot of the success of post-millenial Apple comes from the top executive at Apple, like Tim Cook, tempering Jobs’s vision. But they don’t always win. The Mac Cube, the unnecessary stagnation of the Mac Mini, the U2 iPod, and the MacBook Air pricing all reek of debates in the company where Jobs’ vanity and ego prevailed over business wisdom.
It is speculation, of course. I know about sales figures for the Mac Mini and the U2 iPod and can say with a fair degree of certainty that they were/continue to not be commercial successes. But I have no insight into the internal company processes that led those products to their ultimate incarnations. I speculate based upon what I’ve read and understand from the past and what I see coming from Apple in the present.
Presumably MDJ/MWJ does also, but instead sees a company where Jobs’ vision and direction are often, if not always, tempered with sound business practices. It is hard not to agree with MDJ/MWJ as there reporting on Apple is unparalleled in its thoroughness and research. But I think there is a case to be made the Jobs’ vanity does dictate a lot of Apple, and Apple’s success comes from the tempering of that vanity by capable executives and by the fact that Jobs’ vanity is just in commercial demand. The market has changed more than Steve Jobs has.
Regardless in a little over a week from now we’ll have a lot to discuss. No matter where you fall on this issue particular issue you’d be a fool not to read the next day’s issue of MDJ or that week’s MWJ.
History Repeats Itself
MacJournals responded to my post with the following:
@thewolf Mac factory: 1984-1992. NeXT factory: 1989-1993. There’s no evidence in 15 years to support the idea of “vanity mfg.” None. Period.
When historians say that history repeats itself, they don’t mean literally. It isn’t that the soldiers of the Civil War will reanimate themselves and blister the fields of Pennsylvania with muskets but only that sometimes nations can plunge themselves into war if similar conditions to the US Civil War are met.
My argument is simple. Steve Jobs will dictate product policy that doesn’t make good business sense.1 Steve Jobs does this because of his sometimes unyielding view of technology. If Steve Jobs is passionate about manufacturing, which by all accounts he is, he may institute manufacturing at Apple even if it isn’t supported by business school principles of supply chain and inventory.
I don’t want to belabor the point.2 It is a popular myth to see Apple Inc. as just an extension of Steve Jobs’ mind and opinions, and that isn’t correct. Hundreds of talented people work at Apple and shape its existence and product lines.
My argument isn’t that all of Jobs’s prior dalliances in manufacturing were vanity endeavors.3 But only that history may be repeating itself.
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I cite the the Mac Cube, the U2 iPod, the stagnation of the Mac Mini, and the MacBook Air’s absurd pricing as examples. ↩
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Kinda sad I can’t be clear with over 500 words in response to a 140 character tweet. If I had a day job I wouldn’t quit it just yet to become a professional writer. ↩
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I don’t know if in the past Apple or NeXT’s manufacturing processes were out of vanity, but NeXT’s hardware business’s epic failure along with its difficulty unloading their manufacturing plant suggests that the manufacturing plant was not a good idea, and perhaps a quixotic endeavor by SJ. ↩
